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The Myopic Muddle of the Army’s Operations DoctrineMaj. Daniel
J. Kull, U.S. Army
L ast Veterans Day, the Army published its up-dated edition of
its operations doctrine, Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0,
Operations, as well as its companion reference guide, Army Doctrine
Reference Publication (ADRP) 3-0, Operations.1 Along with ADP 1,
The Army, these manuals are the Army’s capstone doctrine and
represent the insights of fifteen
years of hard-earned experience in the crucibles of Iraq and
Afghanistan. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see our mistakes
of the past, and these manuals attempt to correct them.
But, this is the only good that comes out of an oth-erwise
disappointing effort to revise and update doc-trine. The new
doctrine is unimaginative, inconsistent,
Capt. David Minghella (left), a communications officer assigned
to Green 1 Security Force Advisory Team, 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry
Regiment, and 1st Lt. Ziaullha (right), a platoon leader in the
Afghan National Army, analyze captured Taliban identification cards
found 24 May 2013 during a clearing operation in the Kushamond
District of Paktika Province, Afghanistan. Recent rewrites of U.S.
Army doctrine, heavily influenced by more than fifteen years of
combat experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, may generate erroneous,
misleading, and counterproductive assumptions about future
conflicts. (Photo by Sgt. Mark A. Moore II, U.S. Army)
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and foresees an enemy whose principle activity is to stand still
while we smite him. Even if the substance of the doctrine was good,
it would be inaccessible to its readers due to its ineffective
writing style that impedes understanding. An ill-conceived capstone
doctrine will have a profound, negative impact on the Army’s
readi-ness due to its influence on the rest of doctrine, and so
there is an urgent need for the Army to rescind these editions of
ADP and ADRP 3-0, and reinitiate the doc-trine process before we
fight the next war.
Fortunately, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) already has
a useful process and set of rules for developing doctrine, so
undertaking a revision of capstone doctrine is not as daunting as
it seems. Doctrine writers merely need to reexamine this manual
with a critical eye and then rewrite it with strict ad-herence to
the requirements of TRADOC Regulation (TR) 25-36, The TRADOC
Doctrine Publication Program.2 Indeed, reports have surfaced that
the Army is drafting a new Field Manual 3-0, to be published this
October.3 While these early reports are unclear as to whether this
will complement ADP and ADRP 3-0, or replace them altogether, it is
a promising step in the right direction.
Until then, our extant doctrine is ADRP 3-0, which contains the
logical underpinnings of the summarized conclusions in the abridged
ADP 3-0 and is the focus of this essay. It represents a doctrine
that purports to look to the future but is too heavily influenced
by recent op-erations in Iraq and Afghanistan, refuses to jettison
the lexicon of a linear battlefield, cannot fathom an enemy that
may be our military peer, cannot convey a clear idea of multidomain
battle, and fails to present a vision for how we will fight and win
the next war.4
Preparing for the Last War Instead of the Next War?
There is no way for us to know how the next war will unfold, but
it is no more likely to resemble our recent and ongoing operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other operation along the
continuum of conflict. Yet, throughout the text of ADRP 3-0, we
find references to ideas that reflect what we did in Iraq and
Afghanistan for the last fifteen years. While some or all of these
ideas may emerge again in the next war, their canonical inclusion
in capstone doctrine betrays a backward-looking mindset.
For example, will the next war require us to part-ner with local
security forces? Doctrine suggests so; it tells us, for example,
that “Soldiers interacting with partner units and local security
forces garner trust when they engage these forces with respect and
cultural understanding.”5 This statement is incontrovertibly
true—so much so that it is a platitude. But partnering with and
training local security forces is an artifice of nation-building—if
we invade a country and change the regime, we have a responsibility
of ensuring their local security, which we can do when conditions
allow. However, if we are defending an ally from foreign
aggression, or liberating an ally from the same, we are probably
not too consumed with training a police force inside our ally’s
borders—we have a much more dangerous external threat, and the
population we are defending or liberating is presumably friendlier
and more capable of governance than if we were occupying a
prostrate, hostile country.
Will the next war include an organized enemy that we can engage
decisively, or will it be another lengthy nation-building exercise?
ADRP 3-0, in the first para-graph of a section titled “Army
Forces—Expeditionary Capability and Campaign Quality,” declares
that when “objectives involve controlling populations or dominating
terrain, campaign success usually re-quires employing landpower for
protracted periods.”6 Forget for a moment the conceit that we can
“control” populations; the worrisome problem with this sen-tence is
that it pessimistically resigns us to protracted, attritional
campaigns. Can we imagine a method to control populations or
dominate terrain (or achieve the ends that those ways seek) without
protracted, attritional campaigns?
ADRP 3-0 dedi-cates a section to the topic of “basing.”7 It is
an informative and logical discussion of the characteristics and
pur-poses of bases and base camps. But why does it belong in the
capstone doctrine for how the Army fights? Are we assuming that
static basing is a necessary
Maj. Daniel Kull, U.S. Army, served fourteen years as a Signal
Corps officer, including three tours in Iraq, two supporting
Operation Iraqi Freedom, and one tour supporting Operation Inherent
Resolve. He holds a BA in economics from John Carroll University
and an MA in military histo-ry from Norwich University.
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component of campaigns in the next war? Chief of Staff of the
Army Gen. Mark A. Milley has already warned us that “the days of
Victory Base, the days of Bagram or other static locations for
comfort or command and control will not exist on a future
battlefield against a high-end threat.”8 For good reason—the enemy
will swiftly destroy them. If base camps are only survivable if we
are facing a low-end threat, perhaps the Army’s capstone doctrine
should not assume that the next war will include base camps.
After fifteen years of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Army doctrine now includes stability tasks as an enduring component
of decisive action: “a higher echelon, such as a division, always
performs offensive, defensive, and stability tasks simultaneously
in some form [emphasis added].”9 And it makes sense that a division
always has some element conducting a stability task in a
nation-building operation. But what if the operation was not a
nation-building operation? Suppose it was an archipelagic defense.
Why is the division wasting time conducting stability operations
(which this manual says it must always do) when it should be
digging fighting positions and emplacing obstacles? Or, suppose the
operation was the liberation of a NATO ally from foreign
aggression. Should the combat trains be pushing forward ammunition
for our warfighters or vaccines for the livestock of the civilians
they are trying to liberate? Common sense suggests that we can
engage in stability tasks when conditions allow and the operational
objectives require, such as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. But
ADRP 3-0 does not allow us to use common sense. It says we always
conduct stability operations.
The Obsolete Lexicon of a Linear Battlefield
The introduction to ADRP 3-0 refers to AirLand Battle and Full
Spectrum Operations—two previous op-erational concepts that
successfully advanced the Army’s way of war. AirLand Battle, in
particular, represented a watershed moment for the Army in that it
not only changed the way we fought, but it also changed the way we
expressed ideas about fighting. It introduced into our lexicon new
words and phrases, many of which persist today. But not all of the
words in our professional vocabu-lary today are still relevant, and
unfortunately, ADRP 3-0 chose not to proscribe some of these words
and ideas.
Lines of Operation and Lines of Effort. These Jominian
constructs may still have some utility as a planning tool, as they
allow commanders to outline to their staff and subordinates their
vision for getting from the base of operations to the objective.
But they are mental traps due to the linearity they assume. AirLand
Battle recognized that “while lines of opera-tion are important
considerations in the design of cam-paigns and major operations,
their importance should not be overdrawn. … The operational
commander should choose his line of operation carefully, but he
must not hesitate to alter it when presented with an unanticipated
opportunity.”10 AirLand Battle wisely kept the discussion of lines
of operation out of the body of the text and instead relegated it
to an appendix.
Interior and Exterior Lines. ADRP 3-0 includes the idea of
interior and exterior lines—another nine-teenth-century relic—but
does not demonstrate why or how they are relevant on a modern
battlefield.11 The idea that a force can enjoy the benefits of
either interior or exterior lines on a nonlinear battlefield is
increas-ingly difficult to defend. But if it is still a relevant
idea, then it is incumbent upon ADRP 3-0 to show how it matters and
how commanders can use them to their advantage. As it is, ADRP 3-0
defines these phrases and then abandons them.
Deep/Close/Support Areas. These ideas came from AirLand Battle
(where “support” was originally termed “rear,” and they were
“operations” not “areas”).12 In the AirLand Battle formulation of
campaigns, the enemy before us would attack linearly in a more or
less ceaseless river of combat power, and victory in the close area
depended upon interdicting the enemy in the deep area, while we
strove to keep the enemy from breaking through into our rear area.
It was very neat and linear, and the genius of AirLand Battle was
that it outflanked the linearity of the battlefield by hitting the
enemy from an unexpected direction and follow-on forces attacked
deep into the enemy’s rear.
Today, however, nonlinearity has become the stan-dard of warfare
everywhere, whether it is through in-surgency or major combat
operations. The enemy will endeavor to appear unexpectedly in our
support area just as we seek to strike him in his rear. It behooves
us to embrace this nonlinearity and become comfortable with it. So
what is the point of continuing to use the mental constructs of
deep, close, and support areas?
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We are no longer glaring across the Iron Curtain at Warsaw Pact
forces. The modern enemy will not respect the linear divisions of
“deep, close, and support areas” of the battlefield.
Levels of War as Echelons or Units of Measurement. AirLand
Battle codified the levels of war—strategic was the employment of
armed forces to secure the objectives of national policy, tactical
included the actions units used to win battles and engagements, and
operational connected the two through the employment of available
military resources to attain strategic goals within a theater of
war.13 The levels of war do not imply echelons, nor do they imply a
unit of measurement. But, ADRP 3-0 debases the utility of the idea
of levels of war by employing them as an echelon of command
(“tactical commanders … execute operations and accomplish missions
assigned by superior tactical- and operation-al-level commanders”)
and by measuring distances with them (“strategic reach,”
“operational and strate-gic distances”).14 This demonstrates a
fundamental misunderstanding of what the levels of war mean and why
we use them.
But, if our professional language has evolved to allow the
levels of war to measure distances or echelons, then our capstone
doctrine must stan-dardize understanding across the profession of
arms. How far is an operational distance versus a strategic
distance? What echelons are tactical, and what are operational?
The Enemy Demands RespectADRP 3-0 does not respect our potential
enemies
and underestimates the threats we are likely to face in the next
war. The enemy will teach us some humility very quickly if we march
into battle thinking that we are facing the dimwitted, cowardly
punching bags that ADRP 3-0 makes them out to be.
What is our theory of victory? ADRP 3-0 says,Army forces seize,
retain, and exploit the initiative by forcing the enemy to respond
to friendly action. By presenting the enemy multiple dilemmas,
commanders force the enemy to react continuously until the enemy is
finally driven into untenable positions. Seizing the initiative
pressures enemy commanders into abandoning
their preferred options and making costly mistakes.15
This is a roadmap to success against a feeble or out-numbered
enemy. But what happens if the enemy has the same military
capability as our own? What if the en-emy seizes the initiative?
After all, the enemy is probably operating in his own backyard,
while we have to project power to get to the fight. What if the
enemy presents us with multiple dilemmas and forces us to dance to
his tune, instead of him to ours? ADRP 3-0 also claims that “Army
forces present the enemy with multiple dilemmas because they
possess the simultaneity to overwhelm the enemy physically and
psychologically [and] the depth to prevent enemy forces from
recovering. … [T]hese op-erations place critical enemy functions at
risk and deny the enemy the ability to synchronize or generate
combat power.”16 But if we are facing a peer enemy, we cannot
assume that we possess sufficient forces to present si-multaneous
dilemmas. The enemy may outnumber us, both in raw numbers and in
capabilities. The enemy’s depth may exceed our operational reach,
allowing them an opportunity to recover and regenerate combat
pow-er. Doctrine offers no prescription for when we face an enemy
that is not a pushover.
Doctrine also does not have a solution for the prob-lem that
anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities pose: “The capability
to project power across operation-al distances allows forces to
present the enemy with multiple dilemmas as forces with mobility,
protection, and lethality arrive at unexpected locations, bypassing
enemy anti-access and aerial [sic] denial systems and strong
points.”17 ADRP 3-0 has fancifully assumed away the problem it
seeks to solve. Enemy A2/AD systems are the very impediments to
power projection. This is the flummoxing paradox that multi-domain
battle is supposed to address—that we need land power to counter
A2/AD, but we cannot project land power into theater until we
counter A2/AD. So how does ADRP 3-0 envision defeating enemy A2/AD?
Through power projection, which magically bypasses the systems that
threaten power projection. Do enemy S-400 missiles bounce off of
our C-17s? Do our sealift vessels repel enemy antiship cruise
missiles?
ADRP 3-0 extols forcible entry operations as a means of
overwhelming an enemy: “Forcible entry operations can create
multiple dilemmas by cre-ating threats that exceed the enemy’s
capability to
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respond.”18 History indicates that this is a dubious assertion.
Forcible entry operations imperil the in-vader, as it forces the
invader to scrabble for lodg-ment in a disadvantageous environment
against an enemy that enjoys the benefits of prepared defenses. The
invader must violently project and sustain pow-er, and the risk of
failure is high, as invaders learned at Gallipoli, Anzio, Arnhem,
and other infamous battles.
Doctrine also assumes that we will win the
re-connaissance/counterreconnaissance fight: “With knowledge of how
the enemy is arrayed, Army forces achieve surprise through maneuver
across vast distances and arrival at unexpected locations.”19 If we
achieved the unattainable ideal of “full knowl-edge,” we could
always achieve surprise. But a peer enemy will fight the
counterreconnaissance battle to prevent us from gaining any
knowledge of how it is arrayed. And what if a peer enemy gains more
knowledge about how we are arrayed than we gain about how it is
arrayed? The enemy is just as likely to maneuver across vast
distances and arrive in our rear, as we are to arrive in the
enemy’s. In fact, the enemy may be more likely to maneuver against
us than we are against it, especially if the enemy enjoys the
protection of A2/AD systems.
So what should we do if we encounter unfavor-able battlefield
conditions or an enemy that can outmatch us locally? Logic suggests
that we would retreat: “A retrograde operation is a maneuver to the
rear or away from the enemy … to gain time, to preserve forces, to
avoid combat under undesir-able conditions, or to maneuver the
enemy into an unfavorable position.”20 This sentence is part of an
informative chapter titled “Retrograde Operations.” Unfortunately,
this chapter resides in the 1993 version of Field Manual (FM)
100-5, the last op-erations manual to describe retrograde
operations in great detail. The current version of ADRP 3-0
continues the dubious tradition, started in the 2008 revision of FM
3-0, of pretending that the Army does not need to know how to
retreat. Retrograde operations receive one mention—in a table
listing defensive tasks—with no description of how or why to
conduct them.21 If we do not know how or why to conduct retrograde
operations, what happens when we face unfavorable battlefield
conditions?
Failure to Explain Multi-Domain Battle
We are on the cusp of a change in warfare and the timely
appearance of new editions of ADP and ADRP 3-0 could have been the
voice of authority to explain how we will fight in this new epoch.
Milley sketched out a vision for a solution, which he called
multi-domain bat-tle, that saw the Army “maneuver in all of the
domains to gain temporal advantage [to] enable the joint force
freedom of action to seize the initiative. … [L]and-based forces
now are going to have to penetrate denied areas in order to
facilitate air and naval forces.”22 While it is clear that Milley
foresees this radical shift in the char-acter of war that requires
a change in the way we fight, ADRP 3-0 does not describe how the
Army implements multi-domain battle in operations and instead
describes multi-domain battle as essentially a new phrase for what
we have always done.
Consider, for example, this boilerplate language: “Just as the
enemy will attempt to present multiple dilemmas to land forces from
the other domains, Army command-ers must seize opportunities across
multiple domains to enable their own land operations.”23 Of course
we must seize opportunities. But how? And does joint integra-tion
play a role (as the manual states later), or do Army commanders
simply seize the opportunity? The manual does not explain. It
offers lofty goals, such as, “Army forces conduct multi-domain
battle … to seize, retain, and exploit control over enemy forces.
Army forces deter adversaries, restrict enemy freedom of action,
and ensure freedom of maneuver and action in multiple domains for
the joint commander.”24 But it does not offer guidance on how we
achieve these goals.
The clearest sign that our new capstone doctrine is putting old
wine in a new bottle is the statement, “Commanders extend the depth
of operations through joint integration and multi-domain battle.”25
This exact same sentence appeared in the 2012 version of ADRP 3-0,
but without the reference to multi-domain battle.26 Ergo, nothing
has changed, but we have added the win-dow dressing of
“multi-domain battle.”
No Vision for How to FightUltimately, ADP and ADRP 3-0 are not
useful ad-
ditions to the pantheon of operational concepts because they do
not envision and describe a way for the Army to fight the next war.
Past operational concepts, such as
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the 1976 “Active Defense” version (“win the first battle of the
next war”) and the 1982 AirLand Battle version (“powerful initial
blows from unexpected directions and then following up rapidly to
prevent [the enemy’s] recovery”) of FM 100-5 foresaw a new way of
war and described a vision that guided the Army without being
prescriptive.27 The latest edition of ADRP 3-0 offers no new vision
for conducting operations; indeed, in what appears to be an effort
to avoid prescription, it offers no vision whatsoever and instead
provides a menu of considerations for commanders.
Muddled Writing StyleAny doctrinal publication, good or bad, is
inef-
fective if it cannot convey its message to its audience. ADRP
3-0 is accessible only to those readers fluent in TRADOC’s esoteric
language. This language includes passive-voice sentences, tortuous
sentence construc-tion, lack of transitions among ideas,
tautologies, hyperbole, contradictions, an Orwellian redefinition
of words, and unnecessarily dense, pseudointellectual prose. TR
25-36, which governs doctrine production, already contains a robust
list of requirements for writ-ing quality, such as concision,
consistency, and “written at a reading grade level appropriate for
the user.”28 As the examples below demonstrate, ADRP 3-0
contra-venes TRADOC requirements for writing quality; with a little
critical analysis and attention to detail, TRADOC can easily fix
these shortcomings.
Low Readability. The first thing that an aspiring reader of ADRP
3-0 will notice is its incomprehensibil-ity. ADRP 3-0 scores
twenty-one on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease scale, making it
about twice as unread-able as War and Peace.29 This is not because
ADRP 3-0 is enlightened; instead, it takes prosaic ideas and
dress-es them in the multisyllabic finery of sophistication.
Consider this passage on operational environments: “An operational
environment for any specific operation is not just isolated
conditions of interacting variables that exist within a specific
area of operations. It also involves interconnected influences from
the global or regional perspective (for example, politics and
econom-ics) that impact on conditions and operations there.”30
Translation: External influences such as politics and economics
impact operational environments.
The manual also struggles with occasional para-graphs that
meander into stream-of-consciousness
musings, untethered to any topic and unburdened by logic.
Consider the excerpt below:
Army training includes a system of tech-niques and standards
that allow Soldiers and units to determine, acquire, and practice
necessary skills. Candid assessments, after action reviews, and
applied lessons learned and best practices produce quality Soldiers
and versatile units, ready for all aspects of a situation. The
Army’s training system prepares Soldiers and leaders to employ Army
capabilities adaptively and effectively in today’s varied and
challenging conditions. Through training and experiential practice
and learning, the Army prepares Soldiers to win in land combat.
Training builds team-work and cohesion within units. It recog-nizes
that Soldiers ultimately fight for one another and their units.
Training instills discipline. It conditions Soldiers to operate
within the law of war and rules of engage-ment. Training prepares
unit leaders for the harsh reality of land combat by emphasizing
the fluid and disorderly conditions inherent in land operations.
Within these training situations, commanders emphasize mission
command. To exercise mission command and successfully apply combat
power during operations, commanders must understand, foster, and
frequently practice mission com-mand principles during training.
Training must include procedures for cybersecurity and defense of
cyber-based platforms that support the warfighting functions.31
What is the point of this paragraph? The topic sen-tence states
that the Army has a system of techniques and standards for units to
gain and use necessary skills. Each bromide that comes after it is
putatively true, but they each stray further afield from the topic.
It is like the chil-dren’s party game Telephone, where the variance
accumu-lates with each new sentence so that by the time we finish
the paragraph we are somehow discussing cybersecurity.
Tautologies, Hyperbole, and Bravado. ADRP 3-0 is diluted by
tautologies which serve only to confuse the reader, such as: “The
elements of operational art are flexible enough to be applicable
when pertinent.”32 How do we know they are applicable? Because
they
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are pertinent. How do we know they are pertinent? Because they
are applicable.
The manual also employs hyperbole and bravado to describe the
Army and operational environments. Consider this hyperbolic
statement: “Millions of peo-ple die each year from communicable
diseases; these numbers may grow exponentially as urban densities
increase.”33 Absent a human extinction event, this is
preposterous—an exponent of merely 1.4 would kill every human on
Earth in less than a year. The number of people who die of
communicable diseases may grow linearly each year (and it is not
clear that such a hypoth-esis is even relevant to the doctrine),
but if the number grows exponentially, we do not have a military
prob-lem—we are all dead. As bad as hyperbole is, bravado is worse:
“Army training produces formations that fight and win with
overwhelming combat power against any enemy.”34 This is
self-delusional. Army training is essen-tial to competing on the
battlefield, but does not confer upon us “overwhelming combat
power.” Woe will befall the commander who believes this.
ContradictionsImportant parts of the manual are
contradictory.
Consider this passage on Army training:U.S. responsibilities are
global; therefore, Army forces prepare to operate in any
environment. Army training develops confident, competent, and agile
leaders and units. Commanders focus their training time and other
resources on tasks linked to their mission. Because Army forces
face diverse threats and mission requirements, commanders adjust
their training priori-ties based on a likely operational
environ-ment. As units prepare for deployment, commanders adapt
training priorities to address tasks required by actual or
antici-pated operations.35
The first sentence asserts that the Army prepares for any
environment. The second sentence is wholly unrelated to the rest of
the paragraph, but serves as a mental firebreak, to allow the
reader to forget what the first sentence said. This is important,
because the third, fourth, and fifth sentences assert that the Army
does not prepare for any environment. Rather, the Army fo-cuses on
tasks related to anticipated missions and likely
operational environments (and somehow needs three redundant
sentences to say this).
In another contradictory section, the manual extols the virtues
of flexibility, stating that “leaders constantly learn from
experience … and apply new knowledge to each situation. Flexible
plans help units adapt quickly to changing circumstances in
operations.”36 A few pages later, the manual reverses course and
dictates that
Commanders make only those changes to the plan needed to correct
variances. They keep as much of the current plan the same as
possible. That presents subordinates with the fewest possible
changes. The fewer the chang-es, the less resynchronization needed,
and the greater the chance that the changes will be executed
successfully.37
So unless the commander encounters a “variance,” such as enemy
tanks rampaging through his rear area, he or she should stick to
the plan. After all, flexibility might create the need for
resynchronization, and evidently the manual posits that Army
leaders are too stupid and lack the agility and adaptability to
handle change.
Redefinitions of Common WordsThe manual creatively redefines
common words. For
example, the definition of the defeat mechanism “dis-locate”
does not mean to actually dislocate the enemy; rather, it means to
achieve a positional advantage over the enemy.38 The enemy may
decide to stay in place, and may even decide to fight from his
position of dis-advantage. But the friendly commander whose troops
must fight this determined enemy can declare that he or she has
successfully “dislocated” the enemy.
The most obvious and consequential example of word redefinition
is the introduction of “simultaneity” as one of the tenets of
unified land operations. A lay-person might think that simultaneity
means essentially the same thing as synchronization, another of the
four tenets of unified land operations. So the manual care-fully
defines the two to distinguish them: Simultaneity is “the execution
of related and mutually supporting tasks at the same time across
multiple locations and domains [emphasis added].”39 Synchronization
is “the arrangement of military actions in time, space, and purpose
to produce maximum relative combat power at a decisive place and
time [emphasis added].”40 So it ap-pears that the difference
between the two is that one is
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diffused across multiple points and the other is focused on a
single decisive point.
But then the manual continues on and tries to clarify the
definition of synchronization. “Synchronization is not the same as
simultaneity,” the manual insists, “it is the ability to execute
multiple related and mutually support-ing tasks in different
locations at the same time, producing greater effects than
executing each in isolation [emphasis added].”41 So by
contradicting the joint definition of syn-chronization, ADRP 3-0
manages to make the definition of synchronization identical to that
of simultaneity—same time, different places.
Any manual written so ineffectively will not achieve traction
within the profession of arms. If TRADOC wishes to avail its
capstone doctrine to all members of the profession of arms, then it
must follow TR 25-36 guidance and write in plain, simple words. It
must stop adding unnecessary words to sentences and unnecessary
sentences to paragraphs, and it must stop using big words when
small words suffice. It must know what message it wants to convey
to its readers and it must convey that message as clearly as
possible.
A Proposal to Improve DoctrineSo what should the Army do to fix
this problem?
The first thing it ought to do is immediately rescind ADRP 3-0
and ADP 3-0; there is no apparent benefit to these manuals over the
previous versions.
The second step is to reinitiate the doctrine process in
accordance with TR 25-36, with a criti-cal appraisal of the current
security environment. As Milley noted, the character of war is
changing and the old way of fighting is inadequate.42 Why learn
this at bloody expense in the next war, when we can learn it—and
adapt to it—now? We have an immediate need for new doctrine—but it
must be
genuinely new, and not the old doctrine dressed up in new
buzzwords.
Third, put the right people in charge of writing the new
doctrine. That means that merely being a doctri-nal genius is not
good enough; the authors must also be able to convey that genius to
the rest of the Army through clear writing. It also means that the
authors must have a vision for how to fight and win the next war,
and the divine inspiration to channel that vision into a coherent
doctrine. And it means that the inspired visionaries with
proficient writing skills who write the new doctrine should not be
smothered by layers of bureaucracy or forced to write by
commit-tee; too many authors spoil the final product and the few
authors ought to be able to present their product, unretouched by
the bureaucracy, to the final decision authority. These three
ingredients were essential to the recipe for success when TRADOC
produced AirLand Battle manuals in 1982 and 1986.43
War as we know it is changing. The next enemy we face will have
better weapons than us, greater speed than us, and will outnumber
us—and if this turns out not to be true, it harms us none to assume
it to be true anyway and prepare accordingly. We will defeat the
enemy only because our doctrine will capi-talize upon our national
strengths and exploit enemy weaknesses. Our doctrine must temper
the impulse of commanders, predisposed toward action, to charge
headlong into the kill zone until we understand and describe the
conditions of the multidomain battle-field that would support the
insertion of warfighters.
If we do this right, we can advance our doctrine through a
manual that guides the Army on how to fight and win the lethal wars
of the near future. If we do nothing, we will lose early and often
in the next war against a peer enemy and it will cost us
dearly.
Notes1. Army Doctrine Reference Publication (ADRP) 3-0,
Opera-
tions (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office [GPO],
11 November 2016); see also Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0,
Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. GPO, November 2016).
2. U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Regulation
(TR) 25-36, The TRADOC Doctrine Publication Program (Fort Eustis,
VA: TRADOC, 21 May 2014).
3. Courtney McBride, “Army Crafts Long-Range Mod-ernization
Strategies,” Inside Defense, 11 April 2017),
accessed May 15, 2017,
https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/army-crafts-long-range-modernization-strategies.
4. ADRP 3-0, Operations; ADP 3-0, Operations.5. ADRP 3-0,
Operations, 1-5.6. Ibid., 1-10.7. Ibid., 2-6.8. Mark A. Milley
(speech, Dwight David Eisenhower
Luncheon, Association of the United States Army [AUSA] Annual
Meeting, Washington, DC, October 4, 2016),
-
Doctrine
MILITARY REVIEW ONLINE EXCLUSIVE · MAY 20179
Defense Video Imagery Distribution System video, accessed 1 May
2017,
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/485996/ausa-2016-dwight-david-eisenhower-luncheon.
9. ADRP 3-0, Operations, 3-4.10. Field Manual (FM) 100-5,
Operations (Washington, DC:
U.S. GPO, 1986) [obsolete], 181.11. ADRP 3-0, Operations,
2-5.12. FM 100-5 (1986), Operations, 35-39.13. Ibid., 9-10.14. ADRP
3-0, Operations, 5-2, 2-7, and 3-12.15. Ibid., 3-6.16. Ibid.,
3-14.17. Ibid.18. Ibid.19. Ibid.20. FM 100-5, Operations
(Washington, DC: U.S. GPO,
1993) [obsolete], 11-1.21. ADRP 3-0, Operations, table 3-1.22.
Milley, “AUSA 2016—Dwight David Eisenhower
Luncheon.” 23. ADRP 3-0, Operations, 1-1.24. Ibid., 3-9.25.
Ibid., 4-7.26. ADRP 3-0, Unified Land Operations (Washington,
DC:
U.S. GPO 2012) [obsolete], 2-13.27. FM 100-5, Operations
(Washington, DC: U.S. GPO,
1976) [obsolete], 1-1; FM 100-5 (1982), Operations, 2-1.28. TR
25-36, The TRADOC Doctrine Publication Program,
3-7.29. To use the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease scale, visit
https://readability-score.com/text. I copied the text of
ADRP
3-0 into the calculator after deleting captions, text embedded
in tables and graphics, and chapter and section headers. For
comparison, the body of this article measures 46.8 on the same
scale.
30. ADRP 3-0 (2016), Operations, 1-1.31. Ibid., 1-12.32. Ibid.,
2-4.33. Ibid., 1-4.34. Ibid., 1-12.35. Ibid.36. Ibid., 3-16.37.
Ibid., 4-8.38. Ibid., 2-3.39. Ibid., 3-15.40. Joint Publication (
JP) 2-0, Joint Intelligence (Wash-
ington, DC: U.S. GPO, 2013), GL-11. While joint doctrine
designates JP 2-0 as the authority on the definition of
syn-chronization, the main body of JP 2-0 defines it only in terms
of intelligence activities. Only in the glossary does JP 2-0 use
the definition of synchronization that the Army uses, and even then
it is merely a transcription of the original definition of
synchronization from FM 100-5 (1982), Operations. It appears that
the Army has surrendered its authority on a term it coined and now
joint doctrine has bizarrely delegated that authority to the joint
intelligence community.
41. ADRP 3-0 (2016), Operations, 2-14.42. Milley, “AUSA
2016—Dwight David Eisenhower
Luncheon.” 43. Huba Wass de Czege, in discussion with the
author, 21
November 2016.
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